10 Tips to stretch your battery life in Emergency Situations

by Mobile Jorge on August 18, 2009

Since we love our devices so much and they got a lot of usage, here are 10 tips to stretch your battery power to the max when we most need it in emergency situation.

These are so good folks especially if you're new to Symbian

Ok, let me explain why post can be a life saver. There are times when one has use the phone all day and the battery is off course suffering from the heavy day usage but you still need to get that call or that email that is really important and this is when these tips will come in handy to stretch out the battery to the max so you're able to get that important communication.

1. Set your screen brightness to Minimum.

One of the things that takes up the most power in your device is the screen. The N95 had a massive screen and a battery that wasnt powerful enough to cope with it. The N95-8Gb solved this with a more powerful battery but with an even larger screen. The N82 screen is pretty modest in comparison so it doesnt take that much power, but the N82's battery is also much smaller than the N95.
Turning down your screen brightness is always a good starting point in trying to save battery power because the more brighter your screen, the more power is needed to keep it that bright.

To turn down your screen brightness go to your menu by pressing your menu button:

Go to the Tools folder and then open settings :

Under settings go to General :

Then select Personalisation :

Then select Display :

There, select the "Light Sensor" :

And turn it down to its least value. You'll notice your screen gets a lot darker :

Thats all there is to it !

2. Turn off Bluetooth.

There's no sense to keeping your Bluetooth switched on, unless you're transfering some sort of data or paired with a bluetooth headset. When you're locking down on your battery you'll want to stay away from doing both. Bluetooth draws a substantial amount of power, so making sure its switched off is always a good idea.

To do this go to your Tools folder in your Menu and select connectivity :

In there select Bluetooth :

And make sure Bluetooth is switched off :

3. Make sure WiFi scanning is off.

If there's anything more power draining than bluetooth, its WiFi. Many N-series phones these days come with WiFi. If you use WiFi alot, you've probably noticed how it eats up battery life.

Your phone can also search for new WiFi hotspots whenever you move to a new area. This is pretty useless if you're in a place where there is definitely no WiFi or you're in the middle of nowhere. So switch that WiFi scanning off !

To do this, on your active standby screen navigate to your WiFi shortcut :

And make sure it says "WLAN scanning off". If its on, select it and on the menu that pops up, select "Switch WLAN scan off" :

4. Set your power saver timeout to its least value.

When you're trying to save battery, you want your power saver mode to kick in as soon as possible. The N80's screen would go completely blank and the only way you'd know the device was still on, was by the blinking LED light. The E71 does the same, and if you hold the center button down for a few seconds, the screen briefly turns back on to show your the date and time. On the N82 and N95, power saver mode is basically just the date and time screensaver. You can also set text or an image as a screensaver but the date and time one is the least battery draining of them all.

To do this, navigate to the same place as step 1 above and instead of selecting light sensor, select Power Saver Timeout :

And set it to its least value :

Select OK and that's it.

5. Set your light timeout to its least value.

What more can i say here… Lights takes power , so switch them off when they're not needed. If you set your phone's light timeout to its least value, the backlight will switch off faster which means less battery drainage.

To do this, navigate to the same place as in step 1 but instead of selecting light sensor, scroll down and select Light Time-out :

Select it and set it to its least value :

6. Set your phone's profile to "Offline" when you dont need to make/receive calls.

When you're roaming,or your signal is low, your phone is constantly trying to grab a signal from a matching network. This takes a lot of power. Even in normal everyday use, your phone uses some power to communicate with the network. If you dont really expect to call/receive calls from anyone, switch your phone to the Offline profile. This is basically Flight mode, where you can use all the basic features of your symbian device, except calling and network related features.

If you absolutely must be connected, switch your phone to its silent profile and turn vibration off. This way it wastes no extra power to blare your ringtone and vibrate when someone calls. Anything that saves power is good in this case.

To do this, simply navigate to your profiles via your menu or power button (on shortpress) and select the Offline Profile :

7. Lay off the gaming, music or data transfers.

Gaming requires constant button pressing, sounds and the backlight is always on. Music is less demanding but your device is still using power to pump out that song that you're listening to. Transfering data by WiFi or bluetooth is also another battery drainer. Try to refrain from these if you're trying to save battery.

8. Lay off the GPS.

Many new N-series and E-Series phones nowadays, come with GPS built in. While this feature might be useful, when its a huge battery drainer. I usually only use my N82's GPS to find out where exactly I am , or to tag a photo or two and then switch the GPS off. There's no sense to keeping it on, unless you have a power source around.

On the N82, you might also want to make sure the "record location" feature under the camera application is switched off. This feature searches for a GPS signal and tags your pictures with the co-ordinates. While an incredibly useful and cool feature, when you're trying to save battery life it makes sense to turn it off.

To do this, open your camera application :

Go to options then select settings :

And make sure Record Location is switched off :

9. Make sure there are no background Applications running.

You phone is like a computer with RAM. Anything running in the background takes up memory and hence uses power. You'd be suprised how much power a simple application, running in the background, can take.
Hold down your menu key for a few seconds to bring up your task manager and make sure there are no extra applications running in your phone.

10. Lock your Keypad.

Accidental button presses means the lights of your phone come back on, or your phone might accidentally dial out, or an application might be opened , etc.

I always lock my keypad to prevent stuff like this from happening. Its a major simple and effective power saver. On your symbian phone you can press the left selection key and the * key to lock your keypad (In the N95 its the left selection key and then the right selection key. In the N81 you must use your keypad lock switch at the top of the device).

Hope that helps ! Have any other battery saving tips that I've missed out on ? Let me know in the comments section ! And if you have other tips feel free to add them in the comments as well. Happy Nokia-ing around